joran. kirn tumulty of the national post and doyle mcmanus of the national times. >> award-winning reporting and nanls -- analysis, covering history as it happens. live in our nation's capital, this is "washington week with gwen ifill and national journal." corporate funding for "washington week" is provided by -- >> this rock has never stood still. since 1875 we've been there for our clients through good times and bad. when their needs changed we were there to meet them. through the years from insurance to investment management from real estate to retirement solutions, we've developed new ideas for the financial challenges ahead. this rock has never stood still, and that's one thing that will never change. prudential. >> additional corporate funding for "washington week" is provided by boeing.

additional funding is provided by the annenberg foundation, the corporation for public broadcasting and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. once again, live in washington, moderator gwen ifill. gwen: good evening. the u.s. economy is a puzzling thing. today it added 157,000 jobs but the unemployment rate kicked up to 7.9%. also today the dow industrial average closed above 14,000 for the first time in five years, yet the government reported this week that the economy contracted in the fourth quarter of last year for the first time since 2009. so as congress agrees to delay a showdown over the debt ceiling and faces a march 1 deadline for across the board spending cuts, what to make of this darned economy, david?

>> am i supposed to answer that? it is confusing. the stock market is up. employers are hiring, very slowly. the government now tells us that hey -- they hired a lot more last year than previously believed. auto seafls are up 14% from last year. housing sales are coming back. on the other hand the economy took a pause at the end of last year? unemployment is very high, 7.9%. among men between 25 and 54 one out of six is not working. so i think when you cut through all this what do you see? well, the stock market is going like this and the economy is going like this. that can't last. i can't explain the stock market except maybe there was a gigantic sigh of relief. the republicans aren't going to force the u.s. freshry due default and the europeans aren't going to blow themselves

up economically. you see an economy that's growing -- slowly. growing is better than not growing. the europeans are trying the not growing thing. the private sector is healing. in the last three months the private sector added 625,000 jobs and the public sector, state, local, and federal governments cut 25,000 jobs. but what we see the -- is the prospect that the government could start making things worse again. we have these across the board spending cuts. allan kruger said it was important for congress to avoid self-inflicted wounds to the economy. it would be ironic where after a period where the government in a sense rescued the economy in a situation where it cut too much too fast? >> so the answer should be another stimulus package, tax cuts, more government spending? >> there are people who argue

that. gwen: there's no political appetite for it. >> it is not going to happen. what kruger is talking about, the president's economist is let's not cuts too fast. the only way we could get anything that resembles stimulus if we got a long-term spending thing but that looks unlikely. >> there was criticism by the republicans this week over the white house's decision to disband -- disband the president's jobs council. what was this and what difference does it make? >> i don't think it makes any difference at all. i love republicans criticizing the president for disbanding something they said didn't do anything in the first place. it seemed like it was an act of political theater that had run its course. the president hadn't met with them over a year. it never had any purpose other than p.r. gwen: now just another blue

ribbon commission. >> even worse. >> there was a lot of talk on capitol hill this week about the upcoming budgets cuts and whether or not there's any appetite in congress to stop that and i can't help but wonder what that does for the economy. >> i think you're right. i think the betting is now that the across the board spending cuts that were supposed to take effect at the beginning of the year were deferred until the first of march are more likely than not to take place. the republicans seemed to have realized if that i do nothing they'll get spending cuts. cuts for the defense contractors and they're very worried about that. it won't be good for the comply but now that they've settled the tax question it may not be all that bad. gwen: have they settled by delaying this debt limit deadline -- have they settled that or -- >> march 1 the spending cuts hit. march 27 the government's

authority to operate runs out and then the debt ceiling is hit again on may 19 or something. i think that the republicans appear to have decided they don't want to have a fight over the debt ceiling so having -- that's pretty clever -- they didn't raise the debt ceiling, they suspended it for a couple of months. i think they're signaling they want to have a fight over spending and they don't see the debt ceiling as a good lever. gwen: boy, it feels like we're going to be talking about this more. you made it very clear. i like that. it has become an article of faith in washington that common ground is the capital's most valuable and elusive real estate so it was remarkable to watch four democrats and four republicans announce that they are working together to come up with a compromise on one of society's touchiest issues -- what to do about the now 11 million people living in the u.s. illegally.

>> elections. elections. the republican party is losing the support of our hispanic citizens and we realize that there are many issues on which we think we are in agreement with our hispanic citizens but this is a preeminent issue with those citizens. we cannot continue as a nation with 11 million people resaudiing in the -- residing in the issues. it has to be done in a bipartisan fashion. gwen: president obama followed up with an endorsement. >> i believe we are finally at a moment where comprehensive immigration reform is within our grasp. but i promise you this, the closer we get, the more emotional this debate is going to become. immigration has always been an issue that inflames passions. gwen: and that's where things get sticky because all the

players in this, the president, the senate, the house, they may not be talking about the same things. i'm not certain they're all on the same page. >> they are and they aren't. there are going to be differents and we're going to start to see them explode in the next couple of months. while there were different entities coming from different points of view they're arriving at the same place. you have tea party republicans saying that we have to legalize this 11 million undocumented population and that has never happened before. this is a brand-new era for the republicans and there are some republicans that i've talked to who are irritateed that nobody has noticed that. there's been a real shift on just the whole debate since the last time that we talked about it, which was in 2007, but the problem starts to come when we decide about citizenship. do these undocumented immigrants get to have citizenship and if so what has to happen first?

so the president wants a certain path to citizenship. the senate bipartisan commission that we just heard about wants their citizenship to be conditioned on border security and that's a term that could be defined impossibly high or ridiculously low and we just don't know. then there's less than we know about what's going on in the house. there are some conservative house republicans who say we don't want anything special for them in terms of citizenship. they seem to be upset about widening the lanes, so to speak, about letting more people in those could kill the negotiations. gwen: john mccain was not talking to be population. he was talking about hispanic voters. karen, forgive me. 2007 sounds like an echo of some place we've been before. >> yeah, the things that people

are talking about now -- enhanced security on the border. cracking down on hiring of illegal immigrants, a legalization program, all of those things were actually done, written into the law in 1986 and i looked back and looked at the signing ceremony where president reagan declareed that future generations of americans will be faithful for our efforts to humanely regain control of our boarders. that law -- borders. that law, the last immigration reform that this country attempted actually left the country the exact same problems it had then, only worse. back then there are three million to five million illegal immigrants. now there are 1 1. rather than settling this question of who gets to be an american, it's now more enflamed than it has been in memory and it's in part because of that law and its failures

that i think we are where we are today. >> as i understand it, the decree teak of the 1986 law is in part because it amounted to an amnesty and that turned to -- out to be a magnet for more immigrants so how does the kind of law that's being talked about now escape the problem of being branded as amnesty? >> the problem with that law -- ronald reagan was actually willing to use the word "amnesty" but what it lacked was the enforcement. for the first time ever it was going to become illegal to hire somebody who was not authorized to be in this country so they made it illegal but never enforced it. in the fiscal year 2006 exactly zero employers got fined for that. gwen: it's almost like if you just enforce the current laws you wouldn't have this problem? >> that was the argument that,

in effect, killed the last attempt to do this in 2006 and 2007. i think people are becoming for sophisticated now and understand that it's actually impossible to enforce the law based on the tools that we have now. the other big flaw with the 1986 law is that they didn't come up with a rational system for the future flow of immigrants so there was no way for employers to get the employees that they needed. so you have this weak law with a difficult way of verifying whether someone's here legally. you have no way for please to come in legally so they come from illegally. >> there are some familiar faces. john mccain has been on this issue before. it's not surprising but the real fresh face here is marco rubio. he seems to have spent a lot of time going to conservative talk radio to soften the ground. how important is this to him and how important is he to the

whole issue? >> marco rubio is a really interesting player, in part because of his own story. he is the son of legal immigrants. >> from cuban to florida. >> right. he is an icon among conservatives who do see him as the future and he has a way of talking about this issue where he had rush limbaugh essentially eating out of his hand so i think that a lot of republicans do look to marco rubio has -- as sort of finding the path but statement you have the 12345r9 from louisiana saying -- senator from louisiana saying marco rubio is just naive. gwen: what about the president's role? they beat him to the punch in the announcement. he went to las vegas the next day and say me too and we hope they mean it. is he waiting for congress to take the lead? >> for now. this has been a delicate dance

and it's been going on behind the scenes for months. how hard does obama have to woman out -- come out to push for this before he starts to alienate the sentence i think he struck it almost exactly right in his speech. he went ahead and let the bipartisan group come out with their proposal first and he praised them during his speech. he said here's what i want and let's talk about it. he didn't draw any lines in the sand but he also said if you guys don't do anything, i'm going to step in and then later when he was on with, i think it was univision, he said three months is about -- i'm not going to tolerate that. >> let me ask about interest groups in pastoras business has been on one side, they wanted lots of cheap labor. unions have been on the other side. is that still the case?

>> there are still some differences but they've been working together on the same issue since 1996. they made a huge shift in their immigration policy then and right now the u.s. chamber of commerce and the afl/cio are working on working on something to do with guest workers or temporary workers per se, foreign workers on visas. the afl/cio is making sure we are keen on saying if they had their druthers no guest workers at all but permanent type of labor. they'll come up with a deal and present it to members of congress. >> it's a delicate balance. on the one hand they want to set up a system where businesses can get the labor

they need but they don't want it a pretexts for not hiring americans and paying them. >> aren't the unions dealing with the same thing that the politics -- politicians are dealing with? that the demography has changed insurance this first came up? >> in some ways more than others. health care workers, they know if they are going to grew in the future it is going to be by bringing in and bringing out of the shadows this immigrant population. gwen: thank you. we have to move on to the chuck hagel confirmation hearings. senators and former senators usually get the kid glove treatment in front of their former pierce but not so for chuck hagel. >> i'm on the record on many issues but no one individual vote, no one individual quote, no one individual statement

defines me. my believes or my record. my overall world view has never changed. gwen: but by the end of an eight-hour hearing he's been called a flip-flopper, untrustworthy and lacking in judgment. it's generally now greed he did not do so well. what remains unclear is what happened, doyle? >> what happened? well, gwen, as you said, some former members of congress do brilliantly in front of committees. gwen: john kerry. >> and leon panetta? they schmooze and charm their colleagues and then there's chuck hagel. that's not who he is. he started out -- as he said, no single quote. well, he had a lot of quotes that were going to be a problem. he had a whole lot of relationships with republicans that were going to be a problem. but he's also kind of a prickly guy and the first rule of a

confirmation hearing is be agreeblet. don't be controversial or prickly and that was kind of an unnatural act for him. you could almost see the frustration in him. i was looking at the back of his head for some time so i had to look at the video at the front of his head. he pleaded ignorance on issues that he shouldn't have been i guess narnt of. he got tangled in awkward attempts to explain where he'd been on different issues. it was not a commanding performance. >> of all the exchanges, probably the most con ten shouse was probably with senator mccain. two guys, both vietnam veterans, used to be very good friends but you got the feeling that there was something going on in this exchange that wasn't just about this nomination. >> it was about all of those things. actually, the fact that they

had been friends and allies made it worse. because it was -- well, i don't want to compare it to marriages or affairs, but the fact that they'd been side by side on a lot of foreign policy stuff 10 and 20 years ago and then had a break over the war in iraq and then chuck hagel didn't support john mccain when he was running for president. gwen: he did the first time but not the second time. >> right, when he was actually a candidate. gwen: the actual nominee. >> and then finally the fact that john mccain believes very deeply in his own positions and wanted to prove himself right and hagel wrong and thought he had him on the surge. all of that. >> so it was great theater. as gwen said, hagel got beaten up. is he going to get confirmed?

>> yes. and it is bizarre in a that she knows probably the worst confirmation hearing performance that any of us can remember of any nominee -- certainly for a cabinet position. supreme court nominations are a little different. and it all comes down to there are 55 democrats. none of those democrats have said they will vote against him. ok. one republican, thad cochran of mississippi has said he will vote for hagel. that makes him the unluckiest republican in the senate because he announced that before this hearing. republicans can try and filibuster. 40 republicans would have to stand in the way. one from missouri has said he doesn't favor filibuster. so it looks as if chuck hagel will be confirmed.

>> what does it mean to have a really partisan vote on this? i don't know if we can find any republican on the committee who would vote for him. and a couple of republicans on the floor, is that unusual? is that going to hurt his -- >> it's not unusual but that has been happening more and more often. one of george w. bush's attorney generals got in by a 50-43 vote i think it was, maybe more than that, that was pretty much a party line. no, it is becoming more frequent that these votes become partisan but for a job like secretary of defense that's not a good thing. gwen: so in the effort to take hagel down there were a lot of things that came up, mostly about his role in the surge and what he thought about iran and israel, what didn't come up and in the end, how much does the substance of his hearing tell us about what kind of secretary

of defense he would/will be? >> if many of us that hearing was a huge disappointment because american defense policy is at a turning point. the budget has to come down. where are you going to cut? we are withdrawing from afghanistan. how fast and what happens next? 66,000 troops in afghanistan right now are risking their lives. the hearing lasted eight hours. by my down -- count, about 10 minutes was devoted to afghanistan. on substance this hearing didn't help us but we have learned very interesting things about chuck hagel and one of them is how ruggedly anti-interventionist he has become since his vote for the war in iraq in 2003. he was against the surge in 2007. he was opposed to the surge in afghanistan under barack obama from 2009. told barack obama that he was getting ruled by the generals.

she was skeptical quietly about the intervention in libya and now opposes any intervention in syria. gwen: thank you all. we want to take note passing of two men. ed koch, the three-term mayor of new york who transformed the city and became a celebrity in his own right. and max campleman, a diplomat who negotiated cold war treaties -- treatries and during one stage act is as moderator for "washington week in review." we have to go for now but the conversation continues online on the "washington week" webcast extra. we'll be talking about the massachusetts senate race and other topics and on our home page peak into the "washington week" video vault to see what doyle said about the immigration story back in 2007.

he looks the same. keep up with daily developments over the pbs news hour and we'll see you again next week on "washington week." good night. >> corporate funding for "washington week" is provided by -- >> we know why we're here. to connect your forces to what they need when they need it. >> to help troops see darningeful before it sees them. -- danger before it sees them. >> to answer the call of the brave and bring them safely home. >> around the globe the people of boeing are working together to support and protect all who serve. >> that's why we're here. >> additional corporate funding for "washington week" is

provided by prudential. additional funding is provided by the annenberg foundation, the corporation for public broadcasting and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >>

production was produced in high definition. ♪ ♪ ♪ every single bite needed to be -- >> twinkies are in there! >> wow! >> it's like a great, big hug in the cold city. >> that food is about as spicy

as i can handle and my parents put chili powder in my baby food. >> i have french fried bits all over the table. just a lot of